Charles Albanese was executed by the State of Illinois for the murders of three relatives
According to court documents Charles Albanese would murder three member of his family over a year period by poisoning them with arsenic in order to get his hands on the inheritance
- Charles Albanese mother in law 69-year-old Marion Mueller would die on August 6 1980
- Marion Mueller mother 89-year-old Mary Lambert would die on April 18 1980
- Albanese father Michael Albanese Sr would die on May 16, 1981, aged 69
Charles Albanese would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Charles Albanese would be executed by lethal injection on September 20 1995
Charles Albanese Photos
Charles Albanese Case
Convicted triple murderer Charles Albanese was executed early Wednesday at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, becoming the fourth inmate in Illinois to be put to death this year.
Albanese, 58, of Spring Grove, had no last words for the more than 30 official and media witnesses before he was given a dose of lethal drugs. He was pronounced dead at 12:24 a.m., as about two dozen death-penalty opponents held a vigil outside the prison grounds.
In a statement released earlier by his lawyer, Albanese angrily maintained that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted, the poisoning deaths of three relatives.
Prosecutors maintain that greed for power and money motivated Albanese to kill his victims in Lake and McHenry Counties in 1980 and 1981 and to try to kill a fourth
Throughout the day Tuesday, state and federal courts refused to grant Albanese a last-minute reprieve of his death sentence, and Gov. Jim Edgar refused a clemency request.
Albanese discouraged his family, including his six children, from visiting him in prison Tuesday, his lawyer said. Albanese did, however, talk to a priest, and was communicating with his lawyer by telephone
Shortly before 8:30 p.m., he took an oral sedative, which Illinois prison officials routinely offer to condemned inmates in the hours before their executions.
About 9 p.m., Albanese issued a statement that he had written a week ago, intending it to be released upon his death, according to his lawyer, Roger Webber.
“By the time you have read this you will have executed an innocent man,” Albanese wrote. “Truth, justice and the judicial system is an oxymoron! Not only have you killed an innocent man, you have destroyed my family, all I have worked for in life, and allowed someone to get away with murder. In the name of `justice’ the state knowingly and willfully allowed state experts and witnesses to commit perjury, partaking in the fabricated circumstantial evidence. The case was choreographed by the same people who are supposed to be our protectors against crime.”
Albanese blamed prosecutors for allowing at his murder trial the critical testimony of three witnesses, including his brother, Michael, an intended victim who survived.
Webber said Albanese blamed his brother for the killings of his father, his mother-in-law and his wife’s grandmother. Albanese was convicted of murder in their deaths and of attempted murder for trying to kill his brother.
Albanese was the fourth Illinois prisoner to be executed this year and the sixth since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. One or two more of the 163 other inmates on Death Row in Illinois also are likely to be executed by the end of the year, said a spokeswoman for Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan.
Only Texas leads Illinois in the number of executions performed so far in 1995, with 14.
In August 1980, prosecutors said, Albanese poisoned Marion Mueller, 69, and Mary Lambert, 89, the mother and grandmother of his then-wife, Virginia, when they came to his Spring Grove home for a Sunday dinner.
At the time, their deaths went unexplained. But a year later, when their bodies were exhumed, officials concluded that they had died from arsenic poisoning.
Prosecutors maintained that Albanese was motivated to kill by about $60,000 in bank funds, real estate, life insurance payouts and pension proceeds that he obtained upon the deaths of the two women. At the time, Albanese was behind on payments to satisfy bank and mortgage loans. He also owed child support from a previous marriage.
In the fall of 1980, Albanese’s brother Michael, then in his early 30s, began suffering from what was later determined to be non-lethal doses of arsenic. Prosecutors later theorized that the poison had been placed in his lunches at work.
And in May 1981, Albanese’s 69-year-old father, M.J., died of what tests of his exhumed body showed was arsenic poisoning.
Those two poisonings followed Albanese’s demotion to treasurer from president in the family company, Allied Die Casting in McHenry.
Albanese wasn’t arrested until November 1981, when McHenry County investigators linked Albanese with arsenic that he had obtained, ostensibly to “get rid” of “some pests around the house,” according to court documents.
In his written statement, which was directed to the “State of Illinois,” Albanese urged other condemned inmates to fight their death sentences.
“To those still on Death Row who have been convicted because of the injustice of our justice system, KEEP FIGHTING! Maybe, just maybe, the people of Illinois will wake up to the injustice. I pray not too many more people will be executed before the People of Illinois realize that any one of them could be next.”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-09-20-9509200315-story.html